• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.489-502
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• 2023

Urban floods pose significant challenges to cities worldwide, driven by the interplay between urbanization and climate change. This review examines recent studies of urban floods to understand their causes, impacts, and potential mitigation strategies. Urbanization, with its increase in impermeable surfaces and altered drainage patterns, disrupts natural water flow, exacerbating surface runoff during intense rainfall events. The impacts of urban floods are far-reaching, affecting lives, infrastructure, the economy, and the environment. Loss of life, property damage, disruptions to critical services, and environmental consequences underscore the urgency of effective urban flood management. To mitigate urban floods, integrated flood management strategies are crucial. Sustainable urban planning, green infrastructure, and improved drainage systems play pivotal roles in reducing flood vulnerabilities. Early warning systems, emergency response planning, and community engagement are essential components of flood preparedness and resilience. Looking to the future, climate change projections indicate increased flood risks, necessitating resilience and adaptation measures. Advances in research, data collection, and modeling techniques will enable more accurate flood predictions, thus guiding decision-making. In conclusion, urban flooding demands urgent attention and comprehensive strategies to protect lives, infrastructure, and the economy.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.252-265
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• 2022

Subsurface velocity is critical for the accurate resolution geological structures. The estimation of acoustic impedance is also critical, as it provides key information regarding the reservoir properties. Therefore, researchers have developed various inversion approaches for the estimation of reservoir properties. The Markov chain Monte Carlo method, which is a stochastic method, has advantages over the deterministic method, as the stochastic method enables us to attenuate the local minima problem and quantify the uncertainty of inversion results. Therefore, the Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion method has been applied to various kinds of geophysical inversion problems. However, studies on the Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion are still very few compared with deterministic approaches. In this study, we reviewed various types of reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo applications and explained the key concept of each application. Furthermore, we discussed future applications of the stochastic method.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.217-227
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• 2023

Crystalline calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) occurs in various geological and aqueous environments as calcite, aragonite, and vaterite. These minerals also have practical applications in engineered settings. Synthetic methods of calcium carbonate have been developed for scientific research and technical applications. For example, these methods have become widely adopted for studying the formation of CaCO₃ minerals and (geo-)chemical processes involving these minerals in natural and engineered systems. Furthermore, these methods have the potential to be applied in various technical and biomedical fields. Water-based synthesis is particularly important for simulating the formation of calcium carbonate minerals in natural aqueous environments. This review paper describes the procedures and experimental conditions for water-based synthetic methods of each calcium carbonate polymorph, compares the morphological and structural features of the resulting crystals, and analyzes the crystallization mechanisms.

• Journal of Space Technology and Applications
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.154-164
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• 2023

In space exploration, spectroscopic observation is useful for understanding objects' composition and physical properties. There are various methods for analyzing spectral data, and there are differences depending on the object and the wavelength. This paper introduces a method for analyzing visible & nearinfrared (VNIR) spectral data, which is mainly applied in lunar exploration. The main analysis methods include false color ratio image processing, reflectance pattern analysis, integrated band depth (IBD) processing, and continuum removal as preprocessing before analysis. These spectroscopic analysis methods help to understand the mineral properties of the lunar surface in the VNIR region and can be applied to other celestial bodies such as Mars.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.129-139
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• 2019

This study investigates the spectral response of red lettuce (Lactuca sativa var crispa L.) to Zn concentration. The control group and the experimental groups treated with 1 mM(ZnT1), 5 mM(ZnT2), 10 mM(ZnT3), 50 mM(ZnT4), and 100 mM(ZnT5) were prepared for a pot experiment. Then, Zn concentration and spectral reflectance were measured for the different levels of Zn concentration in red lettuce. The Zn concentration of the control group had the range of 134-181 mg/kg, which was within the normal range of Zn concentration in uncontaminated crops. However, Zn concentration in the experimental group gradually increased with an increase in concentration of Zn injection. The spectral reflectance of red lettuce showed high peak in the red band due to anthocyanin, high reflectance in the infrared band due to the scattering effect of the cell structure, and absorption features associated with water. As Zn concentration in red lettuce leaves increased, the reflectance increased in the green and red bands and the reflectance decreased in the infrared band. The correlation analysis between Zn concentration and spectral reflectance showed that the reflectance of 700-1300 nm had a significant negative correlation with Zn concentration. The spectral band is a wavelength region closely related to the cell structure in the leaf, indicating possible cell destruction of leaf structure due to increased Zn concentration. In particular, 700-800 nm reflectance of the infrared band showed the strongest correlation with the Zn concentration. This study could be used to investigate the heavy metal contamination in soil around mining and agriculture area by spectroscopically recognizing heavy metal pollution of plant.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.13-28
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• 2019

This study analyzed precipitation environment, heavy metal contamination, and mineral composition of white, reddish brown and mixed precipitates occurring at the Osip stream drainage, Gangwondo. Furthermore, spectral characteristics of the precipitates associated with heavy metal contamination and mineral composition was investigated based on spectroscopic analysis. The pH range of the precipitates was 4.43-6.91 for white precipitates, 7.74-7.94 for reddish brown precipitates, and 7.59-7.9 for the mixed precipitates, respectively. XRF analysis revealed that these precipitates were contaminated with Ni, Cu, Zn, and As. The white precipitates showed high Al concentration compared to reddish brown precipitates as much as 3.3 times, and the reddish brown precipitates showed high Fe concentration compared to white precipitates as much as 15 times. XRD analysis identified that the mineral composition of the white participates was aluminocoquimbite, gibbsite, quartz, saponite, and illite, and that of reddish brown precipitates was aluminum isopropoxide, kaolinite, goethite, dolomite, pyrophyllite, magnetite, quartz, calcite, pyrope. The mineral composition of the mixed precipitates was quartz, albite, and calcite. The spectral characteristics of the precipitates was manifested by gibbsite, saponite, illite for white precipitates, goethite, kaolinite, pyrophyllite for reddish brown precipitates, and albite for the mixed precipitates, respectively. The spectral reflectance of the precipitates decreased with increase in heavy metal contamination, and absorption depth of the precipitates indicated that the heavy metal ions were adsorbed to saponite and illite for white precipitates, and goethite and magnetite for reddish brown precipitates.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.177-186
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• 2021

For disaster management and mitigation of earthquakes in Korea Peninsula, active fault investigation has been conducted for the past 5 years. In particular, investigation of sediment-covered active faults integrates geomorphological analysis on airborne LiDAR data, surface geological survey, and geophysical exploration, and unearths subsurface active faults by trench survey. However, the fault traces revealed by trench surveys are only available for investigation during a limited time and restored to the previous condition. Thus, the geological data describing the fault trench sites remain as the qualitative data in terms of research articles and reports. To extend the limitations due to temporal nature of geological studies, we utilized a terrestrial LiDAR to produce 3D point clouds for the fault trench sites and restored them in a digital space. The terrestrial LiDAR scanning was conducted at two trench sites located near the Yangsan Fault and acquired amplitude and reflectance from the surveyed area as well as color information by combining photogrammetry with the LiDAR system. The scanned data were merged to form the 3D point clouds having the average geometric error of 0.003 m, which exhibited the sufficient accuracy to restore the details of the surveyed trench sites. However, we found more post-processing on the scanned data would be necessary because the amplitudes and reflectances of the point clouds varied depending on the scan positions and the colors of the trench surfaces were captured differently depending on the light exposures available at the time. Such point clouds are pretty large in size and visualized through a limited set of softwares, which limits data sharing among researchers. As an alternative, we suggested Potree, an open-source web-based platform, to visualize the point clouds of the trench sites. In this study, as a result, we identified that terrestrial LiDAR data can be practical to increase reproducibility of geological field studies and easily accessible by researchers and students in Earth Sciences.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.77-89
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• 2021

In this study, a method has been proposed to improve the performance of hydraulic property estimation model developed by Jeong et al. (2020). In their study, low-dimensional features of the annual groundwater level (GWL) fluctuation patterns extracted based on a Denoising autoencoder (DAE) was used to develop a regression model for predicting hydraulic properties of an aquifer. However, low-dimensional features of the DAE are highly dependent on the precipitation pattern even if the GWL is monitored at the same location, causing uncertainty in hydraulic property estimation of the regression model. To solve the above problem, a process for generating the GWL fluctuation pattern for conditioning the precipitation is proposed based on a conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE). The CVAE trains a statistical relationship between GWL fluctuation and precipitation pattern. The actual GWL and precipitation data monitored on a total of 71 monitoring stations over 10 years in South Korea was applied to validate the effect of using CVAE. As a result, the trained CVAE model reasonably generated GWL fluctuation pattern with the conditioning of various precipitation patterns for all the monitoring locations. Based on the trained CVAE model, the low-dimensional features of the GWL fluctuation pattern without interference of different precipitation patterns were extracted for all monitoring stations, and they were compared to the features extracted based on the DAE. Consequently, it can be confirmed that the statistical consistency of the features extracted using CVAE is improved compared to DAE. Thus, we conclude that the proposed method may be useful in extracting a more accurate feature of GWL fluctuation pattern affected solely by hydraulic characteristics of the aquifer, which would be followed by the improved performance of the previously developed regression model.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.169-187
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• 2023

Aggregates from 84 cities and counties in Korea were tested for quality to allow analysis of the physical characteristics of aggregates from river, land, and forest environments. River and land aggregates were analyzed for 18 test items, and forest aggregates for 12 test items. They were classified according to watershed and geology, respectively. The observed physical characteristics of the river aggregates by basin were as follows: aggregates from the Geum River basin passed through 2.5, 1.2, 0.6, 0.3, 0.15, and 0.08 mm sieves; clay lumps constituted the Nakdong River basin material; aggregates from the Seomjin River basin passed through 10, 5, and 2.5 mm sieves; those from the Youngsang River basin passed through 1.2, 0.6, 0.3, 0.15, and 0.08 mm sieves; and aggregates from the Han River basin passed through 10, 5, 2.5, 1.2, 0.6, 0.3, and 0.08 mm sieves, Stability; Standard errors were analyzed for the average amount passing through 10, 0.6, and 0.08 mm silver sieves, and performance rate showed different distribution patterns from other physical characteristics. Analysis of variance found that 16 of the 18 items, excluding the absorption rate and the performance rate, had statistically significant differences in their averages by region. Considering land aggregates by basin, those from the Nakdong River basin excluding the Geum River basin had clay lumps, those from the Seomjin River basin had 10 and 5 mm sieve passage, aggregates from the Youngsang River basin had 0.08 mm sieve passage, and those from the Han River basin had 10, 0.6, and 0.08 mm sieve passage. The standard error of the mean of the quantity showed a different distribution pattern from the other physical characteristics. Analysis of variance found a statistically significant difference in the average of all 18 items by region. Analyzing forest aggregates by geology showed distributions of porosity patterns different from those of other physical characteristics in metamorphic rocks (but not igneous rocks), and distributions of wear rate and porosity were different from those of sedimentary rocks. There were statistically significant differences in the average volume mass, water absorption rate, wear rate, and Sc/Rc items by lipid.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.671-687
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• 2022

It has been reported that about 47% of groundwater wells within 10 km from the coastline in the western/southern coastal areas of Korea were affected by seawater. It has been interpreted that the cause of groundwater salinization is seawater intrusion. The Gilsan stream in the Seocheon area was a tidal stream until the Geumgang estuary dam was constructed and operated. Therefore, it is likely that the Gilsan stream catchment was deposited with sediments containing high-saline formation water prior to the use of landfill farmland at this catchment area. The groundwater in this study area showed EC values ranging from 111 to 21,000 µS/cm, and the water quality types were diverse including Ca(or Na)-HCO₃, Ca(or Na)-HCO₃(Cl), Na-Cl(HCO₃), Na-Cl types. It is believed that this diversity of water quality is due to the mixing of seawater and fresh groundwater generated by infiltration of precipitation and surface water through soil and weathered part. In this study, we discussed whether this water quality diversity and the presence of saline groundwater are due to present seawater intrusion or to remnant high-saline pore water in sediments during flushing out process. For this, rain water, surface water, seawater, and groundwater were compared regarding the water quality characteristics, tritium content, oxygen/hydrogen stable isotopic composition, and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio. The oxygen/hydrogen stable isotopic compositions indicated that water composition of saline groundwaters with large EC values are composed of a mixture of those of fresh groundwater and surface water. Also, the young groundwater estimated by tritium content has generally higher NO₃ content. All these characteristics showed that fresh groundwater and surface water have continued to affect the high-saline groundwater quality in the study area. In addition, considering the deviation pattern in the diagrams of Na/Cl ratio versus Cl content and SAR (sodium adsorption ratio) versus Cl content, in which two end members of fresh surface-ground water and seawater are assumed, it is interpreted that the groundwater in the study area is not experiencing present seawater intrusion, but flush out and retreating from ancient saline formation water.